Description of problem:

At present, as the papi.spec file notes, the static libs for PAPI are excluded from the papi package. i.e.

# Remove the static libraries. Static libraries are undesirable:
# https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#Packaging_Static_Libraries
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_libdir}/*.a

However, the guidelines cited also mention that, given good reason, a package can include a -static subpackage with said libraries as needed.

PAPI is a bit different than most packages as it is often used in instrumenting pre-existing applications (by some of the tools that use it) for performance profiling.  For example, Rice's HPCTookit includes a utility called hpclink for inserting the needed PAPI code in to statically linked applications. 
(e.g. the PAPI counters in the example at the next link needed libpapi.a)

http://hpctoolkit.org/man/hpclink.html

Although statically linked apps are quite rightly frowned upon there are still times when they are preferred (e.g. on diskless compute nodes in a cluster).

In the case of PAPI, I think it is appropriate to make the static version available.

I do not foresee any requirement for any new package to use it (and thus a "BuildRequires: papi-static" _would_ be a big warning sign).  However, I do foresee the need for a "Requires: papi-static" for any tool like HPCToolkit that might need it for its operation (not that HPCToolkit will be acceptable for distribution by Fedora any time soon since it includes a binary blob from Intel, but for those, like myself (and maybe RPMFusion), who like to package it on our own, a full set of PAPI libs is needed). 

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

papi-4.1.0-1.fc14.x86_64


How reproducible:

Build HPCToolkit with the currently included papi package.  


Steps to Reproduce:
1. yum install papi\*
2. Follow instructions at:
http://www.hpctoolkit.org/software-instructions.html
   be sure to include --with-papi when you configure
3. Try to run hpclink.
  
Actual results:

$ cat hello.c 
#include <stdio.h>
main(){printf("\nHello world\n");}
$ hpclink cc -static hello.c
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lpapi
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lpfm
(misc. other messages)

Expected/desired results:

libpapi.a and libpfm.a are found.